Lady Deathwhisper Must Die!

This is the second boss in Icecrown Citadel and the first one that has that we’re not in Kansas anymore feel to it. Stuff you can’t stand in, adds, mind control, crowd control, focused fire; this fight has it all.

I won’t go so far as to say you’ve hit a wall with this one (I’ll save that for Deathbringer Saurfang), but it will serve as your first real test in Icecrown Citadel (even with the recent nerf).

Our strategy for 10 and 25-man are vastly different. In 10-man the entire raid gets up on stage behind the boss. All of phase one is conducted in this area. When the adds spawn we start to dps them down as they make their way to the stage. We just found that it was easier to contain things and keep everyone in range doing it this way.

For the 25-man encounter we like to split up our raid into groups. We have a group handling the adds on the left, a group handling adds on the right. We assign a tank to the add in the back and rotate in a dps to handle the back add based on the type of add that spawns. We also have two dedicated dps on the boss for all of phase one. Sadly, I’m not one of them.

Instead of that cushy job, I am given the following assignments,

DPS the mana shield when there are no adds up.

DPS the adds that spawn to the right-side of the boss. The right side always has two adherents and one fanatic.

DPS any remaining adds after our group’s add are dead.

Backup CC on the mind control. Mages and Shamans are primary on this for our group.

Watch my darn threat in phase two.

Don’t stand in the Death and Decay.

Avoid the ghosts that are spawned in phase two.

Phase I – Handling the Adds

In phase one the goal of the raid is to DPS down Lady D’s mana shield. Once the shield is down you can engage Lady D directly and burn her down. For Lady D in phase one you should,

Put your pet on the boss.

Use Serpent Sting unless you need mana and then use Viper Sting (a couple of these can really keep you out of viper for the whole fight).

There are two types of adds that spawn, fanatics and adherents. The left side will always spawn two fanatics and one adherent, and the right side will always spawn two adherents and one fanatic.

My raid puts me in a group to handle adds on the right side. We like to burn down the adherents first and I always MD adds to the tank. Normal versions of the fanatics and adherents can be killed by anyone. Lady D, however, likes to empower, reanimate them and more. You need to pay special attention to when this happens as the adds will become immune to certain types of damage. If you’re not careful you can find yourself wasting precious mana and cool downs on the wrong type of mob.

The recommended kill priority for adds is,

Deformed Fanatic – They can’t be tanked, must be kited, and must burned down pronto! They are the most dangerous.

Cult Adherents – Although these are just the normal mobs they cast Curse of Torpor which increases the cool down on abilities by 15 seconds. It can and must be decursed; it’s best not to keep these guys around.

Reanimated Fanatics– Immune to physical damage and should be handled by magic classes.

Cult Fanatics – They do a bunch of melee stuff.

Phase II – The Money Phase

For hunters we don’t need to do a whole lot. Keep Misdirects up on the tanks as Lady D will cast Touch of Insignificance which reduces the target’s threat. If you’re not careful you can draw aggro very fast here. Also, she will spawn ghosts that just need to be avoided. They can’t be killed and will eventually explode for a lot of damage. If you’re being chased by one, please don’t run towards people.

Mind Control

Throughout the entire fight Lady D will occasionally mind control a player. Standard MC rules apply here. Crowd Control them, and don’t kill them. I repeat, no matter how much you hate the person, don’t kill them. We usually have a mage and shaman ready to take care of this, but as you know, Hunters can fill this role too. Keep that Freezing Arrow at the ready.

Thing a Hunter Might Want

This is some of the better hunter loot available to us. The trinket is great, the legs are better than our T10, and the Zod’s bow is as good as it gets for now (in fact I’ve seen it drop twice now and still don’t have it 🙁 ).